


Crashed in the Clouds

by TheCshore



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, F/F, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-08-23 08:45:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8321440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCshore/pseuds/TheCshore
Summary: Fighting her own demons is enough, Cassandra thinks, without having to face the Inquisitor's as well. But when Hera Adaar falls into the Fade, what else is she to do but follow?





	1. Perchance to Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Ascendi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1195887) by [loquaciousquark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loquaciousquark/pseuds/loquaciousquark). 



_I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Fade_  
_For there is no darkness, nor death either, in the Maker's Light_  
 _And nothing that He has wrought shall be lost._

 

_-Trials 1:14_

 

* * *

 

There's a glimmer of green over the edge of the hill to their right and Cassandra must hold back a sigh at the sight. They are on their way to Redcliffe to answer a royal summons. Although the king is understanding – fighting a Blight brings a certain level of patience for necessary delay – a rift is no welcome distraction.

Hera Adaar glances around at each of the party in turn before disappearing in a cloud of smoke. They've faced rifts before; it will be no trouble now. Bull charges fist, Cole on his heels as they go together against a wraith. The creature is half dead by the time Hera springs seemingly from nowhere and poisons its neighbor. Cass finishes the poisoned creature off and spins into the next opponent, cutting it down in time to take a collective breath with the rest of her team. The rift resettles, but they know more Fade-dwellers will attempt to break through.

It's only moments before strands of green touch down and twin Terrors and a despair demon materialize. Bull is ecstatic, rushing the demon and leaving Hera and Cass to the remainders. Cole finds his way behind Cass's target, and the giant green creature is dead on his arrival. Bull works hard on another lighting-born wretch. The addition of his companions’ three blades makes him smirk; he makes quick work of his foe. In a moment the opposition shrinks to two demons and a Terror. Hera wears the confident smirk that means the rift doesn't have much time left in it. She and Bull trade banter over a demon while Cass handles the other and Cole slices into the remaining terror. The Qunari pair’s opponent dissipates with a small puff and only Bull joins Cass against her own.

“Brace,” Hera screams. Her three companions give a wide berth, preemptively dodging the lighting that will close the rift. Bull slams his demon toward Cass, and its staggering form reels awkwardly in her direction. She knows he wants her to drop it, let it flip. She meets the demon’s throat with her sword instead. It leaks then bursts green, bright enough to match the lightning bolt stretching from rift to palm, bright enough to light the silhouette of a Terror shrouded half in shadow. Half in the shadow of one standing tall and distracted.

" **HERA**!"

She jerks her head up at her bellowed name, confusion clear on her face at his outstretched hand. She doesn't reach back to him. Instead she hisses, surprise and pain, as the creature's claws connect with her back. As the connection to the rift shatters, but the rift remains open. As she tumbles forward.

Bull's foot lands thunderously beside Cassandra, the noise drowned out by his scream of anguish. She's moving too, boots pounding the earth in a desperate bid for one already gone.

"Stay," Cole says, his voice behind her, aimed not at her. Meaningless. "Protect the rift." Bull doesn’t want to stay. Cassandra doesn’t have to look behind her to know he’s pitched forward, ready to follow her. She knows too that he will do whatever it takes to ensure Hera’s safe return.

"Bring her back, Seeker. _Bring her back!"_ Cassandra doesn't answer him. She runs into the rift instead.

  
•

She expected it to feel like running into a wall. A lightning storm, perhaps. But it feels like running into nothing. One moment She is standing on the ground in a bog, with all the humidity and malleability of mud that plagues such a place, and the next she's on solid ground, surrounded by green. If there is a difference in temperature between herself, her clothes, the air, she cannot feel it. Her armor is suddenly lighter than she ever remembers, light enough to almost not exist. The air, on the other hand, presses down around her with the full force of her heaviest training weights. Giving Bull a ride on her shoulders would not be so strenuous, she thinks. She must be holding up the sky.

There's rock everywhere, green rock, uncertain rock. Under her feet, in the distance, in the air. The forms are fuzzy, hazy. The more she looks at the ground beneath her feet, tries to bring it into focus, into solidity, the more it blurs out of comprehension. She's beginning to feel as though she might be standing on a cloud. She's beginning to feel as though she might not be real.

"Cassandra."

It's a quiet voice. She's gone so long without hearing it, she almost doesn't recognize it. But as she turns she knows what she will see. He is just as she has remembered him, as he looks in the tiny portrait in the locket around her neck. He has the same long hair, the same brown eyes lighter than her own. He hasn't aged a day.

"Anthony?" It's a question of wonderment and it brings a smile to his face.

"Cassie! Still the same sharp mind, I see." She has to bite back the _shut up_ that comes as quick to her lips now as it did twenty years ago. As it did when they lived together – when he was still alive. She looks to his neck and is surprised to find it unmarred. "Looking for a scar?" He's still smirking at her.

"No." Her too-quick retort should widen his smirk into a smile. Instead his face goes wary.

"You shouldn't lie here, little sister. Not in the Fade." His endearment jars her. How can she still be his little sister when she stands before him a full-fledged Seeker, Right Hand of the Divine, a woman who has lived her life and has the scars to prove it while he remains...a child. He died. It should – show. He died and she didn't and he's here now, stuck, trapped in the Fade and if she doesn't act now the Inquisitor might meet the same fate. She needs to find her. She opens her mouth to speak, finds a look built half of affection and half longing on Anthony's face. She cannot recall seeing it when he breathed. "I can lead you to her," he says softly. An apology that she can neither understand nor accept.

"We need her to save the realm. So that no more innocents die."

"You don't have to justify yourself to me," he says with laughter in his voice. She finds her own smile spreading in response, even as he lifts his finger to point her way toward duty.

She follows his gesture with her eyes before her feet, watching cobblestones spread under his outstretched arm where a moment before had been only a vague idea of ground. She trusts Anthony, but this shifting green landscape will take some getting used to. They take several steps in silence before she voices her questions.

“This leads to the Inquisitor?”

“I cannot lead you directly to her. You must understand, Cassandra, there will be trials. It is no easy thing to pull someone out of here. Even if she _is_ the Inquisitor.” She had thought as much, but hearing it from Anthony, from the mouth of one ensnared for so long, it makes her restless. She must succeed. To fail would be unthinkable. And so she walks the green path, pretending not to notice that Anthony’s feet blend into the stones at the corner of her eye, for what feels like ages. Like far too long. Like failure.

“Can we not go a shorter way?” He shoots her a look too close to sympathy for comfort.

“We have to follow the path. I’m sorry.” He shouldn’t be. She does not tell him this. She should be, really. Not once had she thought to come looking for him, to send a mage for him, to ask Solas if he had seen her beloved brother. But here she stands in pursuit of another. They walk on in silence.

The road had seemed long, impossibly long, when he had pointed it out. But it ends abruptly a moment later at a simple wooden door. It stands nearly in front of a small cottage, attached but not. The cottage smears into the horizon while the door remains jarringly clear.

“She is here?” She can’t hide her hope from him. He spills forth sympathy.

“She is, but Cassandra –” She turns back to him with her hand still poised over the knob. She does not want to delay. She does not want to fail. “Truth is subjective. Hers may be different from yours.” And now she is perplexed.

“No it isn’t.” He smirks.

“Of course, Seeker. Just know that while you will recognize her, she may not do the same.”

Cassandra shoulders the door open.


	2. Reach

The cottage is larger than she had imagined, uncomfortably stretched. Counters that normally reach to her waist meet her chest, chairs begin at her hips instead of the backs of her knees. The place is not scaled to her. There is a clock ticking somewhere, the noise undulating surreally around her where her surroundings seem solid and real and not at all like the rest of the Fade has been. Footsteps echo in time to the clock and the reason for the grand scale of the room becomes suddenly evident. The Qunari man walking through a doorway to her left pays no attention to her, may not even see her as he moves to the counter and places something on it, begins chopping. 

"It's your favorite," he calls, turning his head but not his focus toward the door he just walked through, "in honor of your homecoming." Cassandra follows the familiar almost-purr of pleasure his words elicit back the way he came. She stands in the doorway, shocked. Hera sits on the floor in front of a Qunari woman on a couch, between her knees. The woman's hands stroke through Hera’s loose hair, and from her mouth comes a song in Qunlat whose rhythm warps the walls around her. The sway is at the corners of Cassandra's eyes, but when she turns to catch it all is still. She watches her friend instead. Hera leans back against the woman, horns angled over thighs and under elbows so as not to pierce anything. Her eyes are half-closed, no heavy kohl liner around them. No trace of makeup or vitaar on her face at all, no glimmer of gold at her ears or nose. She looks content. Comfortable. 

"Cassandra," she greets as she catches sight of the woman in the doorway, a flicker of confusion crossing her face for only an instant. "Nice of you to drop by." Cassandra takes a cursory glance down, confirms her armor's existence, then focuses back on Hera. 

"Is it?" The song has stopped, but the woman with the ram's horns continues her methodical brushing out of Hera's hair. "She brings nothing but trouble, Kadan."

"Mmm," Hera hums, not a denial, and glances back at Cass. "Do we have a problem?"

"Yes. We have to leave." Cassandra starts forward, but her feet are caught in the floorboards. She tries to lift them, finds them sunk as if in mud. She's only steps away from the doorframe, feet away from Hera. Not close enough to touch. 

"When doesn't she bring problems?" Such harsh words should be spoken with animosity, but instead the woman's voice is filled with sympathy. She means to coddle, not infuriate. Hera leans back into her. "First she accuses you at the conclave, conscripts you to be Inquisitor, expects you to save a town of humans who did nothing but hate you."

"There were dwarves, too." It's clearly a token argument; Hera's voice has no real weight behind it.

"Now she wants you to save a realm that would thank you one moment and throw you out the next? No. Stay here, Kadan. Stay safe with me. Rest your weary head." Hera, to Cassandra's chagrin, loosens back into the woman. 

"Inquisitor," she snaps, perhaps a bit too abruptly, "we must—“

"She mustn't do anything."

"Are you incapable of letting her speak for herself?" Something dangerous flashes in deep brown eyes, and for a moment Cassandra is stilled not by the floor but by fear. 

"Hush, Kadan," Hera drawls sleepily, "I've a tongue. Let me use it."

"Your brains," the woman offers fondly, looking down at Hera with none of the fury from a moment ago, "may be a bit lacking." Hera chuckles, looks at Cassandra. Her lazy contentment is written all over her face, and Cass feels a pang of regret at knowing she'll have to tear this sense of comfort away. Even false as it is. 

"What is it?"

"We must leave. Immediately. It cannot wait."

"It never can, with you! You expect—”

"Hush, mama. She means no harm." It snaps into place, then. The atmosphere of the house, the mannerisms of the woman. Of Hera's mother. 

"Inquisitor, think. When was the last time you've been home?" Her brow furrows. 

"A...long time ago."

"Far too long," snaps the thing pretending to be Hera's mother. "Stay a while. Rest up. Don't you miss your poor mother?"

"A very long time ago." Hera seems dismayed. "I couldn't come back..."

"Why?" Cassandra truly has no idea, but from what she's seen it would have to be important to keep Hera at bay all these years. Perhaps important enough to make her leave.

"You..." Hera turns to her mother, eyes wide. "You're dead! You're dead, dad's dead, our house is charcoal! They burned you!" The thing doesn't wait for Hera to finish. It grows, twists, darkening into a towering menace of purpling not-skin, shiny surfaces and rough textures and a groan as the cottage stretches to accommodate it. Hera recoils, scrambling backwards and away as she watches with wide eyes—and Cassandra can move. She draws her sword, lifts her shield, settles herself just behind Hera's shoulder and gives a nod when the Qunari backs into her. Hera stands, cements her stance as daggers blur into being against her palms and armor drips down her body. The makeup, vitaar, and jewelry are back on the Inquisitor’s face when Cassandra looks again. They don't need words, just motion. It is an odd thing, Cassandra realises with a slowness characteristic of not only herself but the demon they are fighting, to battle a creature of sloth in its home. They surge forward to the creature, but it moves fast, or they move slow, and it doesn't matter in the end because either way neither of them can seem to land a hit. Hera is growling as they stop, regrouping back to back as the thing sinks into the wooden walls. 

"Bees." There's an edge to her voice that Cassandra wants to address. 

"You have them?"

"Yes." When the creature bubbles out of the wood once more, it is met with a shattering vial and a buzzing roar. The thing bellows, distracted for an instant. Just long enough. Hera is behind it, Cassandra in front, and they pin it long enough for poison to seep into its veins. Cassandra slams it to the wall with her shield, Hera slicing once, and an arm thuds to the floor. Cassandra draws her blade through its throat, backs away as the head rolls to the ground and its body crumples. Bubbles. Splashes into a puddle on the ground. She turns and Hera is wiping gore off her blades against rapidly fading legs.

"Inquisitor—” she starts, alarmed, but Hera cuts her off with a wry smile and calm words. Too calm. 

"I think it's alright."

"You are disappearing, Inquisitor."

"And you are not." She raises an eyebrow. "Odd."

"I came to find you. Fitting that I'd be the one to chase you after you go."

"Where did I go?" Her waist is gone now, chest and shoulders nearly transparent. 

"You fell into a rift. Pushed, actually." Hera laughs at that, laughs with a mouth almost gone. 

"Of course," she offers, and vanishes.   
•  
The house falls inward in less a collapsing of wood and more a cloud of dust. Cassandra is left standing in the middle of a cobblestone road and a swirl of Fade mist, particles sticking to her armor and weighing a thousand pounds each. She could brush them off. Instead she remains frozen, staring at where the Inquisitor had been a moment before. There is a rippling shift in the air around her. Then Anthony stands next to her, watching her watch the vacated patch of road. 

"She recognized me. And it did nothing."

"Obviously not nothing. You’re here. The demon isn’t."

"Of course." Cassandra shakes her head, dusts off her armor. And with a final glance at where the middle of the living room had been, she starts again down the path.


	3. All That We Seem

The second door starts as trees. A small thicket where there should be an attempt at grass, branches interwoven, leaves blocking out the sky in an endless stream of glossy green. Anthony frowns, reaches his familiar hand forward until his fingertips meet wood that was alive a moment ago and now is not. Cassandra recognizes neither the carvings of dogs and swords nor the large iron hinges and handle. She steps forward anyway.

"Another test," he offers, "another level of difficulty."

“Can you...is there anything else you can tell me?” He smiles. It’s the one she knew best, full of pride.

“You are up to the task.” Cassandra nods—however shakily—and steps through.

It is dark here, night pierced by unnaturally bright stars and a full moon, the indigo of the sunless sky blanketing her surroundings where they do not glow softly silver. The landscape stretches in endless rolling hills, picturesque beyond imagining. The blue-silver swirl is only interrupted by a blaze of orange over the next swell of ground, the peaceful night broken by distant laughter. She follows the sound to a fire in the middle of a ring of tents, though only two figures sit outside them. Both holds a glass in hand, and one is gesticulating wildly as his voice rumbles up and down in story. A dark liquid jostles out of his cup, though neither figure makes a move toward it. Cass notes the silent figure's horns curved back, and dares to hope. The other has only one curled appendage where there should be two. She does not recognize him, but from her familiar ensuing laughter, Hera knows him well. Vivid violet irises spot Cassandra first, Hera's head still tossed back in laughter as the man takes her in.

"Hello," he offers, voice deep. "Can we help you?"

"A Seeker? Now that _is_ unusual." Cassandra's heart drops into her stomach when Hera does not recognize her. The last illusion was hard enough to break.

"I'm looking for a friend," she offers warily. The Qunari man's gaze holds a weight she doesn't like leveled at her. Were she wearing full armor instead of the leathers she travels in, she would have drawn her sword and have done with him.

"Aren't we all." His gaze slides over to Hera. Cassandra has no doubt left in her. Hera chuckles, slightly slurred, before turning her attention back to Cassandra.

"Does your friend have a name? Or any defining characteristics? We can't help you if we know nothing of your quarry."

"She's Qunari. She used to be a mercenary, in fact." Hera lets out a low whistle.

"They let Qunari join the Seeker Order now? Never thought I'd see the day."

"You haven't. She is not a Seeker, though the Order...is not what it once was."

"So you came here? There's more than us in Ferelden, my lady." His voice is mild, yet still somehow a threat.

"She is lost. I had hoped she would not wander far."

"You tried to keep her with you? That doesn't work very well with our kind, Seeker." The words from Hera's own mouth lodge a dull ache in Cassandra's chest.

"No," she allows, "it does not."

"It sounds," the man starts, and when Cassandra looks over to him she finds his eyes boring into her, "like you may wish to look elsewhere."

"I think I am closer than I had realized." The tension is near palpable, obvious enough that even tipsy, Hera is glancing between the two of them and leaning toward her daggers.

"Shokrakar?"

"Leave this to me." Cassandra doesn't have time to blink before he's knocked her over, pinned her under his body weight and is snarling into her face. Hera shouts, wordless and warning, drags him back enough that Cassandra can get her shield up.

"Enough," she orders in an approximation too close for comfort, ~~for anything but relief~~ , to that night months ago when she and Varric argued loud above the armory. "You will show a fellow traveler some respect."

"And you," he growls, "will defer to your commander." She loosens her grip on him but does not let go, ignoring his ire to turn to Cassandra.

"I'm sorry. He would never..." She glances down at him, concerned, suspicious. "He would never jump a traveler seeking refuge."

"Only you could view a Seeker as simply a traveler, Adaar. What did you think she was here for?"

"I am looking only for my friend." The interjection doesn't sway the demon wearing Shokrakar's face.

"She comes for the mages, probably you and I as well. When have the Seekers wanted anything but to lock away anyone who isn't human? Who isn't without magic?"

"You don't know her."

"And you do?" He spits the words, a challenge Cassandra cannot match, can only hope is met.

"I..." she considers Cassandra for a drawn out heartbeat before speaking again, but this time Shokrakar's lips move with hers, form her words in time to her voice. "I do not." He stops speaking. She continues. "Nor do I lack common decency." She drops his arm and holds out a hand to Cassandra, approaching as though the Seeker would ever be afraid of her. "My apologies." Cassandra moves to shake with her left hand, her shield arm, and Hera hisses and steps back. "I do know you." She spins away. Then: "you shouldn't be here. I don't— I'm not— why shouldn't you _be_ here?" She looks almost wounded.

"Adaar." Cassandra settles on the title, causing the Inquisitor to twist halfway back around and face her. "You don't travel with him anymore."

"No. I stay with— the Inquisiton. At Skyhold." There's no relief in her voice, only resignation. In front of her, the one who looks like Shokrakar shrieks and grows, taller, taller, taller still as his flesh blackens and splits and oozes a dark ichor. One giant, deathly white eye rolls forward to lock on Hera before a streak of ice shoots toward her. It shrieks once, a strident noise that grates their ears before it forms into words.

“Your Inquisition can never satisfy you!”  Cassandra moves forward as the Qunari leaps back, blocking ice with metal and slashing into him. The ice advances to her blade, laying claim. “How you ache, Adaar. Are you not empty without your family? Are you not collapsing? They cannot hold together around an empty husk.” It shoots forward, its eye inches from Hera’s nose as its body stretches around Cassandra’s frozen sword, around her body to the one she protects. It sucks in a breath, inhales Hera with rapturous enjoyment. “Let me fill your void. I can give you a family. I can give you the belonging you so desperately crave.” Cassandra releases her sword to the ice rather than feed it her hand. She turns, check’s Hera’s progress, and— and she isn’t moving. She’s staring into the thing’s monstrous eye with longing. Cassandra can feel her heart shatter at the sight.

“Demon!” Cassandra punctuates her shout with a shield bash straight to it’s grotesquely mutilated torso. “You have nothing but illusion! Leave the Inquisitor be.” Hera must remember. She is the Inquisitor, belongs with her—Inquisition. A moment later and Hera's daggers join the fray, three blades, poison, and an explosive flask making quick work of it. The demon has only a moment of living left to it, a moment it uses to bring its mouth against Cassandra’s ear. Its whisper is grating as its scream.

“She belongs more with me than you.”  When it's froth has dissipated into the grass, Hera smirks.

"I should introduce you to my commander. You'd like him." Cassandra blows a rough stream of air out of her nose as she shakily sheaths her sword, watches Hera buckle daggers onto her back as her legs disappear. She scowls. "One day I'll get to keep these."

"You will not be trapped here for days." The words are out of Cassandra's mouth before she thinks them. Hera's smirk sours slightly.

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Cassandra. We are in the Fade, after all."

"Then I will make sure my words are true." She has just enough time to watch surprise register in ice blue eyes and vivid red lips open as if to speak before she is staring up at nothing but blue sky and bright stars. They smudge into green, like water on half-dry paint, chunks of sky remaining unchanged seconds longer than the rest before it all washes into green. And all at once she's standing back on the  green cobblestones from before, the sky backlit the same cursed color. Anthony regards her silently.

“She means much to you,” he finally offers. It’s not a question.

“She is the Inquisitor. She is without equal.” It’s non-committal. A truth, she knows, but it still feels like a lie rolling off her tongue. That is two mistakes she has made in the Fade so far. She should be more careful.

"Come," he says finally, “we have little time to waste."

"But we have time?" Cassandra can't keep the hope from her voice. The smile directed at her is full of pity.

"Time is loose. There is never none left, nor infinite amounts. But it passes differently here, if that makes you feel any better." Cassandra growls her frustration, but follows her brother farther into the Fade. 


	4. What Once Was Lost

She has been walking with a hand on her sword hilt for some time before he calls her out on hesitations.

"You have something to say." She had forgotten his questions-as-statements habit. Now she cannot decide if it is endearing or annoying.

"I—do not know how to phrase it."

"You can just ask, Cassie."

"How have you been, here? How have you been, but why are you here? Not—I appreciate that you are the one to guide to me. But I had thought you would be at the Maker's side by now."

"I could have been. I chose not to."

"Why?"

 "You have so much more faith than I ever did, little sister. And besides, I wanted to watch you slay dragons."

"I...missed you."

"I know. You remembered me."

"That did not keep you here, did it?" She is worried now. If she's held him back—he laughs. Laughs hard enough to bend over, barely forces out,

“No, little sister. You don't have so much power." She scowls, but there's a smile breaking through the false ire.

"I've hunted more dragons than you ever did. And I'm a Seeker; you're no Templar." She shoves him, just to make her point. He falls over, still laughing, falls sideways off the path though cobblestones follow him until he lands on them. When he struggles up he checks her shoulder with his own.

"I would always be the best dragon hunter. If I'd stayed," he has the mercy not to use _lived_ , not to remind her he is gone and her time with him is limited, "I would have been a Templar and you would have been Lady Pentaghast." She shudders at that.

"Never."

"Oh, I would have taken you dragon hunting, but only when your duties allowed it, _Lady_ Cassandra." She shoves at him again, but this time he is ready, dancing out of her way playfully and pointing to a swirl of solidifying mist. It reflects pictures: Anthony older and a fair bit more handsome, in full Templar armor. And she sits, hair long and done up, ensconced in a flowing dress that Leliana would appreciate. The Pentaghast crest, etched onto a silver pendant, hangs delicately over her breastbone. She lets out a disgusted growl, swipes at the mist with a gauntlet. It dissipates in long ragged lines, like shredded fabric—if fabric went up in smoke after being torn. Behind the receding image there is a door. Behind it lies her duty. Anthony stops laughing.

This entrance isn't really a door at all but a gate made of large ironclad double doors painted bright yellow and deep red, with shimmering, dancing shapes Cassandra almost recognizes. Anthony steps forward, places a hand on one of the more solid planes of color. His expression turns grim. She wants to go back to a moment ago, when they were laughing. She wants to be done with this ordeal, standing with the Inquisitor in Skyhold far from the Fade. Far from this place that gives and takes in the space of a breath.

“Be careful.” It’s his only warning. Cassandra pushes past him, pushes the door open, and shoves her way into chaos.

Dorian stands in front of her, slumped on his staff, murmuring brokenly again and again.  
"But we stopped this. We stopped this, it isn't real it can't be _real_..." Over his shoulder is just visible a hoard of unmoving demons. Terrors, Shades, all manner of creatures from the Fade, their stench thick in the air. The glowing adversaries block the door out of the vaguely familiar hall. Cassandra can’t quite name the place, a location she’s sure she’s seen before, remembered if only from a distant dream. A shout reverberates periodically through the room from somewhere to Dorian's right. It’s Varric's voice, thick with pain made strident by echoes.

"Hawke!" He screams with the bone deep despair that makes Cassandra think, for one aching instant, of Anthony. The compulsion to reach for him vanishes as Varric is dragged into the room, thrashing back toward where he came, still screaming. His eyes are glowing red, a faint cloud of the nauseating color hanging around his skin. Red lyrium. The Terror dragging him along carries a bloodstained breastplate, unmistakably the Champion's. Cassandra takes a half step forward, the movement aborts itself when a clank of metal draws her eyes to the throne at the front of the hall. the throne of Ferelden, but King Alistair does not sit on it. In his place is Alexius, holding a long, thin chain connected to a helmet. The helmet covers Hera's face completely, leaving room only for eye slits. Her arms are shackled behind her back. Cass realizes with a jolt that she's restrained like a Sarebaas, a mage.

Alexius' laugh is cruel.

"Look at how your friends break before you, and you unable to help. Such a great beast, brought down by one it would have killed." Hera jerks forward, menacing, but stops abruptly as he raises his hand. The metal binding her glows momentarily orange, and a high, throaty keening echoes metallically through the hall. Ice slides through Cassandra’s veins as she realizes with increasing horror that the mage must have sewn her mouth shut. Bile rises in her throat and she reaches for her sword.

Distraction comes again as chains clink to her left, wrenching her sickened gaze to an elf chained to the wall. A familiar elf. The Hero of Ferelden, she realizes belatedly. The woman is bleeding profusely, slices clear and bloody all over her body, but she's pressing forward. Cassandra follows her eyes across the room, heart sinking as a familiar accented voice offers low threats. Then Leliana is shoved into the hall, snarling at her captors in defiance of her pale face and gaunt body. She takes one look at her chained love and hisses at Alexius, spits out:

"I'll kill you!" She's herded off to the side, next to Varric, next to yet another familiar kneeling figure. Cassandra only recognizes herself as her glowing red double begins to pray.

_“Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow. In their blood, the Maker’s will is written.”_

She has said the words before, for every Seeker consumed by a demon. For her parents, her brother, her family. For all the dead she has buried. She glances away, back to Hera, to see the Qunari's helmet angled where she had just been looking. A low rumbling growl leaches from her helmet to fill the entire hall. It's the sound Hera made as she slew their first dragon. It is one she makes at times when her sleep is fevered, plagued by nightmares, when she bares her teeth at ghosts no one else can see.

"Look on what your thievery has won you. Everyone you care for is dead or dying. You couldn't even stop me, a human mage. I was no match for Corypheus, but you? Beast, with your stolen Anchor." He tugs the chain, and Hera is jerked down to his eye level. "You I have defeated. And you have _let_ me." The growl escalates, crescendos, and ends in a grating roar.

**_"ENOUGH!"_** Her hands burst through heavy shackles, go to the chain around her neck. She grasps it, twists it over her palms twice, then around Alexius' throat.

"Yes," he gasps, "yes! Feel the power you hold? Life and death are yours." He reaches out, lifts the helm from her head. She looks— wild. Her eyes are wide, lips drawn back in a snarl revealing bloody teeth and snapped thread. Her hair spills down her back in a tangled mess. She tugs, snarling, and his voice chokes off. He should die. Instead he grows, morphs into a pillar of living flame as she holds on, keeps snarling at him as he matches her height. "Yours," he rumbles, and lifts his fiery hand to the chains.

"Mine," she growls, jerks the chains through his burning throat, spraying drops of liquid metal. Remnants of golden links hiss against cold stone as the demon reaches out, drags a hand down her cheek. Skin sizzles and when she turns to look out over the throne room all has changed. There is no one but Cass in the hall now, no friends and no horde of hellspawn. No one else to meet her glowing red eyes, to watch her vitaar shift and change as though to reveal the demon’s embers smoldering beneath her skin. No one else to stop her.

"Cassandra." She draws the name out in arrogance, in contempt. Condescension aimed squarely at her. "You looked like Felix to me. What do I look like to you, I wonder. Like your fearsome Qunari enemy across the sea? Do I look like Rage incarnate?" Her cadence is that of teasing banter, but her voice belies fury. Cassandra must answer. She cannot deny the being before her, the hideous collision of destruction made solid with Hera.

"Yes.” It hurts to admit, but she cannot lie. Not to Hera. “You look like a demon." She laughs at that, full and cruel and loud and Cassandra's blood runs cold.

"Demon enough to cleanse this world?"

"No! No, you do not cleanse it. You _save_ it!" Hera's laugh twists into a heartless smile.

"There is nothing worth saving here."

"Are the people of Thedas not worth your time?!" She sneers.

"No."

"What have you to fight for? What have you to destroy countless lives for?!" The demon shifts beside her, wrapping it's arm over bare brown shoulders as she lets out a huff of disdain. The smell of burning hair makes its way through the air to Cassandra.

"What do I have? What do _you_ have? Seeker who left the Order, Right Hand to a dead Divine, following an Inquisitor scavenged from the rubble of peace talks with no proof of your precious Maker. What do you have?" Her answer lodges in her throat. She swallows, tries again.

"Faith. And you, Hera, what do you have?"

"Nothing," she snarls, eyes burning a challenge.

"Liar. Try again." Her lips pull back from her teeth, vitaar flashing flickering anger over her cheekbones. The smoldering magic would be beautiful against her dusky skin if it were not so _wrong_.

"You do not command me!"

"I do not command you, but I do know you. You are not without reason, without cause. Why do you fight?"

"Because you condemned me. Because I am Inquisitor, slave to a nation."

"No." Cassandra is snarling back now, furious. "I do not command you. Thedas does not command you. Why do you do it? Why did you agree to lead the realm?" Hera glares, regal in her certainty.

"To save it. To save them. And now they are dead, and I have nothing."

"Not all of them. Would you let the rest die by your hand?" Hera growls, steps forward, away from the demon.

“No." She stumbles, staggers out of the demon’s reach as her vitaar fades from flames, as her eyes settle back to icy blue. And Cassandra is there, shield and sword in hand to hold it off, to stab into it. A flask rolls forward to explode by her feet and the demon is frozen in place. She runs it through with practiced ease and more than a little satisfaction.

There is a ragged gasp behind her, quiet, on the edge of tears. She turns, shield and sword clattering to the floor. Hera's on her knees, sat back on her heels staring up at Cassandra with pleading, desperate eyes.

"Cass, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I—” but she's sliding down next to the Qunari, grabbing her arms and tugging her forward. Their shoulders clash together at an awkward angle, two puzzle pieces that don't quite fit, but Cassandra holds her there until large arms come up behind her back and Hera burrows her head into her neck.

"I'm so sorry," she murmurs, and the wet on Cassandra's shirt is salty and spreading. She doesn't speak, doesn't have words, just runs gloved fingers through thick black hair, cradles Hera's head, and holds her tight until she vanishes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, Tuesday's election was stressful.


	5. Beauty I Did See

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or snored we then in the seven sleepers' den?  
> 'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.  
> If ever any beauty I did see,  
> Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.  
> \- John Donne, Good Morrow

The illusion of Redcliffe remains long after Hera has gone, until Cassandra stands and looks around the hall and tries to imagine what happened here in the year that did not exist. She knows precious little. All Hera has said was that they'd died for her, Dorian that it was painful and he did not wish to speak more of it. Hera brings him to the city whenever she goes, and never fails to throw him a glance if they near the palace. If it was anything like this, Cassandra can forgive the Inquisitor giving Alexius the death sentence. She leaves the room the same way she came in. Anthony waits outside the door, head cocked in uncertainty. Cass doesn't speak, doesn't wait to see what he will ask, just walks on.  
•  
It appears from nowhere, the wooden door with the roses carved into it. Two roses, thorny stems twined together, blossoms adjacent. Cassandra frowns. Anthony finally speaks.

“This door hides desire, little sister. It will be difficult.” She snorts. These trials have not been difficult until now?”

“Can you...see? What lies beyond. After I enter.” His blush burns bright enough for her answer.

“I will look away.” She nods stiffly, starts forward. “Cassandra?” She glances back at him.

"Do not trust the Fade." Cassandra nods. Steps through the door. Steps into Hera's room. A fire roars in the hearth, casting shadows occupied by what appears to be two forms. Hera is pressed against the wall beside the fireplace, eyes heavy lidded and mouth open slightly. She and the figure in front of her are shrouded in shadow, though it does nothing to disguise what is happening. Cassandra is frozen to the spot, unable to look away, unable to bear the sight. A hand finds its way to the small of her back, holds her redundantly still.

"Is she not beautiful?" The questioning voice is smooth, unfamiliar. _Yes_ , Cassandra aches to admit, _of course_.

"You're being cruel," Hera admonishes, eyes locked just over Cassandra's shoulder and only an edge of reprimand in her voice.

"Is it truly cruel if you enjoy it?" The Seeker's stomach drops, blood running cold and hot simultaneously at the sound of the second voice. ~~It is cruel, too cruel-~~ Hera does not answer, only moans. The sound drags a shudder down Cassandra's spine, a chuckle from the being holding her still with the faintest of touches. Hera's breath catches, shoulders tense as she speaks again.

 _"Cass—”_ and Cassandra burns white hot.

"Hera," she says, loud but cracking, clears her throat then shouts again, "Hera!" There is a noise of displeasure next to her, the dig of nails into her back. But Hera jerks to look at her, holds a hand against the false Seeker's shoulder.

"Wait, _sweet Maker, Cassandra—_ wait a moment."

"For what, Herald?" There is something in the way she rolls the title off her tongue that infuriates Cassandra, that makes Hera swallow hard and her eyes go heavy lidded for a moment.

"I heard something."

"Over your heartbeat? I doubt it." The illusion is teasing, drawing Hera's attention, drawing half a smile. Cassandra cannot stand it. Cannot believe it. _~~Could not recreate such intimate familiarity if she~~_ ~~tried~~ — Cannot let herself be drawn into insecurity before she may drag Hera away from here. She tries again.

"Hera! This is a dream, a lie. It is an illusion—Can't you see?" The Qunari's head jerks up, searching as she presses the double away.

"Hera?" It asks, concerned, but she is not paying attention. She takes a step forward. The demon’s fingernails dig painfully into Cassandra's back, drawing blood through fabric and metal alike, and Hera's hand goes up to cover her mouth.

"Cassandra?" Her voice is quiet, disbelieving. "Maker, no. No, no, no. Not this. Not like this." All at once the thing beside her vanishes, sharp half-moons of pain on Cassandra's back gone, and she can move. The false warrior across the room lunges, takes Hera's wrist in her own.

"Am I not enough for you?" The voice is still Cassandra's, overflowing with despair. Hera hisses in a sharp breath through her teeth, flinches backward.

"Don't—” her voice is high, pleading. Then she recovers. "No. You are not. You are not _real_. You are not enough."

"Don't lie to me!" The creature shrieks in Cassandra's voice, in a hundred voices, and lunges. For a thing wearing not a stitch but for smalls, the demon is absurdly threatening. Cass is there in an instant, blocking fingernails and furious eyes with a shield.

"And _you_ ," the thing growls, giving up the ruse of Seeker for scarred brown skin and full lips. For long, elegantly curved horns and icy blue eyes. "You are easy enough to bend to my will. You would do a great deal for—" Cassandra cuts it off before it can finish, shoving the thing back with her shield and ripping a broad slice into its flesh. It shrieks and is gone, appearing again as a false Cassandra beside them, clutching its wounds.

"I could be enough for you, like this." It stares hard at Hera, unchallenging, only certain. "I could make you love me in this form." Hera snarls out a guttural noise of animal fury.

"I could never love you," she spits, hurling a dagger in the wake of her words. The creature's eyes widen, and it does not dodge the weapon. The blade pierces its shoulder, burrows into the wall behind it. Cassandra advances, brings up her shield to block an attempted swipe.

"And you?" It growls, form melting into Hera's shape, "would you be unsatisfied?" She does not answer, merely swings her sword. It shimmers purple at the last second, it's body its own before it dissolves into ash. The pile of grey dust is too small, too insignificant to have come from that creature, surely. One who could twist the Seeker's stomach so easily, so thoroughly, should have left a larger mark in death. Cass turns slightly, finds Hera looking at her with uncertainty, with a trace of fear. Her heart clenches painfully in her chest.

"Are you alright?" Red lips open, but the Qunari hesitates. Then, finally,

"I will be." She takes a step back. Cassandra aches to follow, to reach out and run her thumb over Hera's lips, to check for needle marks, for memory. She sheathes her sword and lets Hera put space between them. Hera takes a breath, a wet and ragged thing just short of a gasp, and then words are spilling from her lips in a rush.

"I'm sorry, that wasn't—I don't want—not like that, Cassandra, I never wanted...to make you uncomfortable, to—I should have— this wasn't—" she stops abruptly, closes her mouth with a sharp clacking of teeth. Takes a steadying breath. The Seeker can see her stoic mask sliding back into place, can see the Inquisitor emerging where so far has been only Hera. And this she cannot stand. She steps closer, quick and sure, until she is most definitely in the Inquisitor's personal space. Until she must tip her head back to glare up at the larger woman.

"Do _not_ ," she enunciates carefully, "shut me out of this. Say what you want, or do not speak, but don't give me a diplomatic half-truth." Hera swallows thickly. But it works: her mouth remains closed but her eyes are no longer guarded, are filled now with pain and sorrow and longing. She lets out a heavy breath and wordlessly leans down, rests her forehead against the Seeker's. "Thank you," Cassandra allows, and they remain that way, silent and apart but for the small, intimate contact until the Qunari and the room can no longer linger.  
•

"That took a while," observes Anthony in a teasing tone as Cassandra watches the stones around her vanish into endless bloody green. When there is no immediate answer, he seems to note something amiss. "It will be over soon," he offers next, reassuring, and looks down the path. Cassandra nods once, stiffly, and turns away from him.

“I just—I want her to be safe.”

“I know.” And that is all she can say without edging on lies and half-truths, all he seems prepared to comfort her with.


	6. Flicker From View

The last door is a cave. The entrance is lit on either side with torches, each burning brightly into the cavern, but the interior is darker than anything Cassandra has seen both here or in the waking world. She can feel its power weighing on her shoulders, forcing her into the ground. She can feel Hera, too— a gentle trickle of power tracing her wrists and over her hands. Urging forward.

"This is the last; it will be strongest." Anthony's voice echoes with a rebound of unnatural twang, almost metallically flat. He has sounded real until now. She takes a moment to vehemently hate the reminder that he is mired here in this soupy limbo masquerading as a realm.

It is time, she knows. She must go, must leave him to this foggy green land of make-believe and mistrust and hard truths. She doesn’t want to. Not here, not like this, not again. He must see it in her eyes: the reflection of a scythe sliding smooth through the column of his throat, of his reaching hand, his falling body, his slightly open mouth. It is all she sees before her now. The dusty cloud his body made as it fell to the earth, different entirely from the stuttering path his rolling head carved. Softened by his trailing hair. He is standing here before her now and she must leave him as abruptly as he was taken from her and...and it is too much. Too much to bear, too much to heft onto aching shoulders already burdened with grief, too much for anyone to ask of her. The healers tell her the heart is a muscle, but muscle should not feel so brittle, so broken.

"Anthony." She means his name to be a question. It comes as a plea. "What would you have me do?"

"Go." He speaks as though it is easy, as though the time they have shared could ever prepare her for this. As though living with a ghost at her side has been simple and her return will be smooth as ice, he speaks.

She screams.

" ** _No!_** " It's all she has. Refusal. He cannot have left her, not so soon, so violent, not like that. He cannot have left her. She _will_ not leave him so alone. Not in this barren dreamscape, not without— anything. Not before he knows. "No, Anthony, you're more important—”

"Than your Inquisitor?! Cassandra, I am _dead_!" It is not anger in his voice but anguish and it cuts to her core. The breath is gone from her body and she can't gasp for more with the rock of his truth lodged in her throat. "I am dead," he says again. Quieter. "There is nothing left for me in your world. But there is still a life for you, a chance at what I could never have. Take it. Please." His voice cracks on the request. The plea. She has to bite down on her instinctive response: _I don't want it._

"I want you by my side again." She is trying so hard for a steady voice. The fact she is failing miserably only adds to her helpless frustration.

"I am where I should be," and here he has the audacity to _smile_ as he points to her chest, "over your heart. Where I can protect you."

"I should have protected _you_!" His exposed neck, so open to injury, his reaching hand—how could she have been so far away? How could she not save him! Her brother. And she stood by and watched while his head rolled. While he reached for her.

"You couldn't have." He is angry now in the way of the Pentaghasts, the way she has never mastered. Their stone-cold fury that slays dragons. "You were a child. You could not have fought them off and you had no magic."

"But it should have been _me!_ The family could have done without me, but you... They needed you. And I cannot do what you would have." There are tears flowing down her cheeks. She knows she should wipe them off, but can't bring herself to rip her focus away from Anthony. She has missed years of seeing his face, has let her memory of it fade. Even the portrait in her locket rests smudged and blurred against her breastbone. She will drink in his features while she can. Even as they are distorted in fury.

He storms toward her, meets her toe to toe. He's a head shorter than she.

"Do. Not," he enunciates carefully, clear, concise. He does not snarl as she does. " _Ever_. Say such things again. You are a better warrior than I. You are more driven, more faithful. You have done our family proud."

"I was no son." The words tumble out on a rattling breath.

"Nor were you meant to be."

"No. That job was yours." Cassandra squeezes her eyes shut, forcing out more tears, drags a shaky breath past the expanding rock blocking her throat.

"You have done so well, baby sister." He is too tender, far too fond to be speaking to _her—_

"I did nothing, Anthony! You reached for me and I could not even reach back. I did not attend your funeral, did you know? I hid instead. You faced down warriors and I could not even face your final ceremony." He surprises her then. It is sudden, his embrace. Almost tight enough to be harsh. His arms lock around her waist and there is nothing to do but wrap hers about his shoulders, to bow her head and hold him. She clenches her teeth around what she hates to admit, but the words keep spilling forward without her consent. "I left you alone in your final journey." It is hardly above an anguished whisper. It prompts a violent sob from him anyway.

"And I left you alone in every journey after. I am so sorry, Cassie. I should have been there, with you, for all of it."

"That is hardly your fault."

"As much mine as yours." She can feel his tears soaking through her tunic at her shoulder. Hers press locks of hair to his head. But there are no more words in either of them for an indeterminate amount of time.

She feels the tug of Hera again as the rock of grief dissolves into swallowed sobs. She takes in one deep breath of his hair before she slowly loosens her grip, steps back. She knows what Varric would say: 'You have a good head on your shoulders, kid.' Then the dwarf would saunter off and finish his job. She is not Varric.

"'All that the Maker has wrought is in His hand, beloved and precious to Him, in the world, in the Fade, in the hearts and minds of men.'” Threnodies’ verses have never been kind to Cassandra; she does not deal well with loss. She must not lose Anthony. The Maker may ask of her what He will, and she will deliver, but He would not be so cruel as to rip her brother away more than once. Surely He would not. She clenches her fists around that thought, holds on tight as she can. “You are precious, Anthony. To the Maker and to me. You will not be forgotten." He steps back, directs a watery smile up at her.

"I believe you. But now you must go now."

“I do not want—I left you once. I do not wish to do so again.” Cassandra aches to reach for him. But it would be too cruel a reenactment of his final action, too much to bear if she made him feel helpless as she did. She won’t reach out when she knows he cannot reach back. He closes his eyes against her as if she had extended her hand anyway.

“It is not me you should worry about, Cassie. Your Inquisitor does not belong here as I do. She will not fair half so well if she is left here before her time. Go. Help her, or she will be left to your memories as I should be.”

She has let him go before, though it took her years. A daily struggle not to let the memory of his dying overwhelm her waking moments. It should, theoretically, be easier now. She finds it all the harder instead. Cassandra has held his memory as an abstract feeling of how he was, a clouded projection of personality. Now that it has been given familiar form, she must give up more than what she came with, must let go of the same boy who was suddenly wrenched away so many years ago. And now it must be her choice. Her departure. Her condemnation of Anthony to wander this magic-choked hell alone until the end of her days and maybe beyond. But she has spent her tears, has said more than she wanted. Aches to hold him though she knows she can’t. And so she turns away. She must leave him, in the end, must make the choice they both knew was coming from the moment they saw each other. Must stumble forward down her path and leave him to his. Must leave.

But she is not required to watch. She allows herself this one weakness. Turns away from him. She watched him die once already. She watched the light leave his eyes, saw his body fall and his head roll. She will not watch him fade easily to green mist as though this departure does not ache, does not rip at her as much as the first. She will not force him to remember her forever with tears in her eyes. She will give him this, give him the sight of her strong back and squared shoulders. She will leave him the silhouette of a warrior. She will leave him a sister to be proud of.

“Cassandra.” He catches her off guard, turns her head back to him without more than her name, ignites her hope so easily. He smiles. It nearly breaks her resolve. “I had better be waiting a long time for you.”

She can't answer him, turns away instead, drags her heavy feet one step at a time into the void of cave’s mouth.


	7. Lamentation

She reaches the end of the void tunnel just as she's starting to believe there is no end, suddenly standing on carpet without having consciously exited the cave. It's familiar woven carpet over worn wooden floorboards. The atmosphere here is different now, the golden glow of happy memory gone in favor of a harsh blue tint turning the cottage’s kitchen garishly cold in comparison. There's a rumble outside, the distant ring of incomprehensible shouts. Cassandra recognizes the Qunari man who enters from the living room door as Hera's father, the child following him as Hera. Not the Hera Adaar Cassandra knows, however. This version of her stands just shorter, horns not quite as long, muscle thinner. Her frame is her own but the skin over it lacks scars, lacks freckles, lacks wear and tear and evidence of stories Cassandra has yet to hear. The frown on her face is familiar, at least: the determined look Cassandra has come to recognize and stand aside from.

"No." Her father sounds angry.

"Papa—" she starts, doesn't get to finish. He whirls around to face her, fury in his eyes.

"I SAID **NO**!" Hera stares at him, wide eyes glistening with unshed tears. Then she's leaning forward, toward him, matching his burning glare.

"I am not a child! I am not bound to your decisions!" Hera's mother bustles in after her, pushing past this younger version of Cassandra's friend to the wall where the kitchen utensils hang. As Cassandra watches, she opens it to reveal a hefty stockpile of weaponry.

"Of course you are, Kadan. Listen to your father."

"Mama—"

"You are not staying here." He takes a dagger handed him by his wife, holds the handle out to his daughter. "Take it and go." She grasps the handle, opens her mouth. He keeps hold of the blade and stares her in the eye. "You will go." She drops it.

"No."

"Hera, we did not raise you to be disrespectful." His eyes are over Hera's shoulder as his wife speaks, clearly no longer paying full attention to the argument at hand.

"You raised me to make my own choices! I'm staying here, with you." There's a loud clang from outside, nearby outside, that shatters whatever patience the ram-horned woman had had left. When she turns, her expression matches the fury of her husband a moment ago. She reaches out, grabs Hera's arm, hauls the girl around and shoves her toward the door. Hera is openly crying now, tears streaming down her face. _I should –,_ Cassandra thinks, but the world around her is changing as she stands still, and suddenly she is outside the house on the grass.

"GO! Run, and don't look back!" The woman shoves Hera out the door, catching her eyes as she turns back toward the house. "I love you. Now go!" She slams the door, and Hera turns, runs. Cassandra chases after her, their feet pounding on the ground, but Hera seems unable to hear it and when she tries to shout her voice catches in her throat. Finally Hera stops, turns back around with a shuddering sob, and the Seeker follows her gaze. Against the black sky is a silhouette, the cozy cottage lit bright orange as it burns. Flames lick from the windows, jump from the roof. As they watch, two dark figures rush a door, knock it down. Their shapes flicker with flame, the heat's distortion not enough to disguise the undulating crowd pushing them backwards, back into the building, with pitchforks and swords. The distant shouts of the crowd go silent to make room for a loud, vicious roar, and then the shouts turn clearly to cheers. Hera lets out a strangled a sob, falls to her knees with a thud. Cassandra moves to comfort her, but her boots are held fast to the ground. She glances up, reaches out, but before she can touch shaking grey shoulders, take hands clasped over screaming lips, the scene is changing.

The field gives way under city streets, the buildings at once familiar and alien. Rain falls steady and drenching from cloudy grey skies, hardly lit from behind by the sun. Hera sits against a wall. She looks more like the woman Cassandra knows now, her face aged not by time but by grief into almost what Cassandra is used to seeing. Her clothes are ragged, worn and thin and a little torn. She has no coat to keep out the rain, and the leather of her boots is already soaked through. A man walks by, a human, and Hera tenses. She does not brace to beg like the elven woman a few feet away, merely turns her eyes away from him and appears to prepare for the worst. She is right to do so. He slows to a stop in front of her, shifts his weight and deliberately kicks her ankle. She can draw it in no closer to her body. She turns her eyes to him instead, expression guarded. Cassandra tries to step forward as he opens his mouth, tries to reach out, to speak, but the ground has swallowed her feet and the air is gone from her lungs.

"You come to beg, beast?"

"No," her voice is just short of a growl, wary and tired and annoyed.

"What was that?" He kicks her again. She doesn't flinch, doesn't move, doesn't react except for narrowing her eyes a bit. Their liner, a new addition since last Cassandra saw her, is smudged enough that the man might not notice the change.

"No, I've not come to beg, ser."

"Then what business have you got here, beast?" Cassandra can see Hera's patience fraying, watches as she barely holds her temper in check. She tries again to move, again is cemented silently in place.

"I'm only trying to keep dry, ser." He sneers.

"Do it somewhere else." She hesitates. "Go on, or I'll have the city guard on you." She stands, carefully. He notices. "An ox with weapons," he yells, thrilled by fear, and Hera bolts. Cassandra is still held to the ground, trapped in the city, but as Hera moves so does she. The scenery flies past Cassandra without her assistance as Hera runs down street after street and ally after ally, is finally trapped at the end of a row of houses in the alienage, soaked to the bone and out of breath. The city guard surrounds her, draws weapons and she reciprocates. She takes three of them down before there's too many for her to keep up with, before they're on her and wresting her daggers from her grip, dragging her to the ground. Cassandra wants to scream, to charge forward and make them stop, to force them back and away. To remind them why the Seekers of Truth are feared.

She manages to get a foot off the ground, to take a step before the stones of the street stretch to drag her boots back down, hold them still. Before the building next to her is leaning toward her, melting around her to hold her about the waist, pinning her arms against her sides, flowing up over her mouth. Before a voice is murmuring into her ear in a multi-octave distortion of Anthony’s tones.

"Wait."

“No,” she gasps out, though the air drags through her lungs like a whetstone against dull mettle. There comes a rippling of the air around her not unlike heat rising off the streets in midsummer and it holds her still, silent, stationary. She wants to scream but can’t get her mouth open around the noise. She has no choice but to remain until Hera is left lying bruised and breathing shallow in the street, until the guards walk away laughing with her daggers still in their hands and joking cruelly how easy it was to incapacitate an ox, until the scene is changing again in a wash of pouring rain. Hera remains solid the longest, the image of her battered body lying in a puddle of reddening runoff burned into Cassandra’s mind.

The world blurs faster this time, to Hera with the familiar scar over her eyebrow facing the Qunari with violet eyes and a broken horn. He sneers at her, lip lifted over wickedly sharp teeth.

"Why would I help you? You are not up to par anymore, Adaar. We don't need you." She stares wide eyed at him, glances to his right to a Qunari woman with white hair and violet eyes and a giant sword at her back.

"Don't look at me," she says with a Ferelden accent, "I'm with him."

"Mikhail—"

"Do shut up, love. You're done here." There's scorn in the woman's voice and face. Hera's shell shocked, Cassandra notes an instant before the landscape melts again.

"You are _nothing_ ," Coryphius spits, holding Hera's wrist above her head. "You cannot defeat me."  He hurls her against the pillar of a trebuchet, a flaming arrow streaks across the sky, and Hera launches a burning rock into the side of a mountain. Haven is buried in a landslide as terrified screams echo through the village.

_No_ , Cassandra thinks but cannot say, _no, we evacuated, they live they're safe—_

She's at Skyhold now, standing in the courtyard. Sera's drawn her bow and is pointing it at Hera, the real Hera, the woman Cassandra knows.

"You don't care about the little people! It's always you and your greater good, but what good does it do us? You maneuver your politics, and you're no better than the bloody nobles always stepping on me and my friends! No more, Inquisitor! I won't stay here and help you ruin people's lives!"

They're next to the stables, staring at Blackwall.

"I let you conscript Wardens, and you use them for what?" He slams his fist down on the carving table, rattling everything on it. "To fight darkspawn that wouldn't exist without you?"

"That's Coryphius's— "

"They spawn from rifts, Hera! Rifts you haven't closed!" He's bellowing across the table at her, angrier than Cassandra's ever seen him.

"I have a lot—"

"I'm going. I'm going to help the people of this land, the people you swore to protect. If you won't rid the land of Blight vermin, me and the Grey Wardens can at least keep them at bay."

"Blackwall, don't—" but the stables are melting away, into the balcony over the Great Hall.

"You can't expect me to stay with what you're doing to the mages, darling."

"I needed to close the Breach." Vivienne levels a disapproving frown at her companion.

"And we needed the Circles. You've done nothing to rebuild them, mages are running around Skyhold unchecked, and we don't have enough Templars to keep anyone safe. This is the only solution."

"We've gotten by so far."

"You alienated the entire Templar order, half the Chantry, and you drag the Fade around this entire fortress by the palm of your hand! You think we can keep mages here under these conditions? You think this is _safe?"_

"We just have to hold out awhile longer." Vivienne gives a hum of disapproval, frown morphing into an outright glare.

"I thought you were smarter than this. Well, you're of no more use to me, obviously. I will have to look elsewhere for allies. Fiona and I, along with the other Redcliffe mages will be departing within the day." She turns around to face her balcony as the loft blurs into the bottom of Skyhold's tower.

Solas leans over his desk, both hands braced against the wood.

"You disgrace your mark. You defy Coryphius in words only, and you stand with those— those pitiful elves and do not even help them! You've given nothing to any of my people, whoever they may be. City elves rot in Orlais, in alienages, Briala is no closer to helping them; the Dalish wander because you've not made it any safer anywhere in Thedas. And you, you _imbecile_ , worst of your kind— do you even know what the Anchor does or do you just flail it at rifts and hope they close?"

"I—" he cuts her off, speaking over her words and leaning farther toward her. Cassandra is concerned for one ludicrous moment that he'll pitch right over the desk and onto the floor at Hera's feet.

"Will you flail it at Coryphius too when the time comes, and hope he falls? Or will you let the land be devoured by his diversions first, while you neither close enough rifts for safety nor defeat the force behind them?!" His words twist around the room and repeat as the walls melt into the Great Hall and Varric's glaring face replaces Solas.

"Hawke defended Kirkwall from people like you. She cast your kind out, and when the city burned it wasn't her fault. You've stirred up the war between the mages and Templars, you've split the Chantry. You lost Haven. Why would I stay here? The Champion can help the world so much more than you, Adaar." The walls bend, swirl, land finally on a likeness of the library.

"I'm a Tevinter mage," Dorian spits like a curse, glaring daggers at the Qunari, "I've lived among Magisters better than you. They keep slaves and practice blood magic, but at least they _do_ something! You and your council, your advisors, you take months to do nothing! What have you accomplished here, Hera? Conscripting mages? Closing a hole in the sky? Alexius could have done that in days."

"I'm trying," she whispers in a cracking, desperate voice.

"Not hard enough."

"Please. Dorian, please, I can't do this alone."

"Well you clearly can't do it with my help either. I'm going back to Tevinter. We started this mess, the Empire should be the ones to fix it."

"But your father—"

"Will turn me into a drooling mess before he accepts imperfection, but at least he takes action." Dorian walks toward the stairs and drips away with the entire tower, browns of the wood floors and stone walls reforming into an attic, into crates, into a blonde head and broad hat.

"I just wanted to help."

"Me too, Cole." Cole explodes, hands flying outward as if of their own accord, leaning forward and forcing Hera back a step, two.

"Pain! Pain in your palm, leaching outward, into them, us, everyone, the land, the sky! Sour rain, sour fruit, sour thoughts, minds, bitter words, wounds, solutions. Temporary solutions, fall apart while being built, bridges and treaties and alliances. Nothing left, nothing left for you, Hera! Nothing left _by_ you! You do not help! You hardly make it bearable!"

"Then help me! Cole, you said you'd help the Inquisition as long as we tried to save Thedas. Help me help them, please!" There are tears now, smudging her makeup and carving tracks in her vitaar. The floor is still holding Cassandra paralyzed, the walls and rippling air keeping her back. The voice echoes again in her ear.

"Wait. Not yet." She snarls silently against it.

"I've seen inside your head."

"You said you wouldn't hold my doubts against me. You said you've seen worse."

"I had. I haven't anymore. Nothing so broken can bring peace, Hera. You are not what the realm needs. You can't help. You bring only pain."

"Cole, please."

"Goodbye." And he's gone.

She flinches when she sees her own face glaring this time. The false Cassandra is wearing full armor this time, at least, and stands gratifyingly far away from Hera. The Inquisitor herself seems less than happy about this, eyeing the distance between them with apprehension.

"You cannot change my mind. I must go."

"I don't doubt it. Can— can you tell me why, at least?"

"You are not chosen, as I had believed. You are not fit to lead the Inquisition."

"Cassandra, I never claimed to be Andraste's Herald."

"You never needed to. I believed you were sent by the Maker, to lead us through these troubling times. I believed you capable of it. I was wrong."

"Cassandra, I can't..." She swallows, hard. Cassandra jerks forward, is held back. "I can't be rid of the Anchor, even if I lose y— the Inquisition's support. At least let me help close the rifts." The false Seeker curls her lip.

"The mages have found a way to seal them with magic. You are no longer needed." And the world spins again into a haze of colors.

They're in the courtyard, outside the tavern, giant grey shoulders blocking out the sun.

"Oh, _Maker,_ Bull!" Hera is relieved, reaching for him, desperate. All traces of her mask, of the Inquisitor, recede into tear stained cheeks and reaching hands. Bull recoils in disgust and Cassandra could swear she hears Hera's heart crack. "Bull?" Her voice comes out soft and vulnerable.

"Get away from me."

"What have I done?" Her hands hang limply at her sides, go up to rub her arms, to hug herself, drop again.

"What have you done? Nothing, Bas, you have done nothing."

"Bas? I—"

"Silence! This, at least, you can manage." She stares, eyes wide and wet but honest. Keeps her mouth closed. He snarls down at her, full of fury unmatched in Cassandra's experience. "You, Bas, have been of little interest to the Qun. The Arishok told me to befriend you, to get close to you, see if you could be of use. And I did, oh I did, to discover what?" He pauses, looks at her expectantly, smirks when she doesn't respond. "I found you to be dull. Pointless. What purpose do you serve?" He seems to wait again, but still she holds silent. "You yourself professed to be a false prophet of a false god, but you have not yielded to my efforts to recruit you. You have no faith, and no knowledge of your...Anchor, none of the Fade, none of...Well, let us say I have had little to learn from you. And yet I put forth so much effort into the acquisition of what, exactly?" He waits. She holds. He steps closer, until he has to lower his head to keep eye contact, until they are breathing the same air. "Your favorite color is half purple half red? Your favorite vitaar is patterned after a wyvern but for special occasions you strip it? That you hardly sleep anymore for nightmares? That though they took everything you loved, you're stupid enough to work with humans? To fall in love with one? Tell me, Hera Adaar, how does this help me? The Qun?" When she finally speaks it's barely above a whisper.

"It doesn't."

"There you go," he roars, pushing away from her. "You should consider becoming more than Vashoth after all: you can at least follow orders. It would give you a purpose."

"Please," she gasps, stepping closer though not seeming to dare to reach forward, "Bull, the Chargers—"

"Were a ruse! Honestly, Hera, I knew you were a bit thick, but this? I've been paying the company of Bas to pretend to be mine. You think I would lose an eye for the sake of a human? And one I barely know at that? Not all of our kind is as foolishly optimistic as you. No. I will not stay for them. Certainly not for you." Hera remains, frozen in anguish as he turns, gives a jaunty wave over his shoulder, and vanishes into a smokescreen that claims his broad shoulders surreally slowly.


	8. From Ashes

Skyhold crumbles as Hera does, rocks falling from the battlements into empty buildings, rolling down the mountainside. The main fortress collapses inward, the Tavern slides apart, staircases groan and crash to the ground. Finally the cacophony of sound dies out. Hera shuffles from her knees to a sitting position, legs crossed in front of her and head in her hands. The rubble of Skyhold releases Cassandra, finally, hands dissolving into stone as the voice echoes in her mind:

"Go."

She doesn't need encouraging, already halfway to her friend. She hesitates when she gets there. She has no words for this. Instead of speaking, she settles down next to Hera, leans carefully sideways until her shoulder rests gently, almost questioning, against the Inquisitor's bicep.

"Are you really here?" The flat monotone of Hera's voice pours ice into the Seeker's veins.

"Always." The word is out of her mouth before she thinks about it. Hera takes a shaky breath in, let's it out slow with the ragged edge of a laugh. An empty one, bitter and self-depreciating.

"You weren't so sure a moment ago."

"That wasn't me." Hera blows out a breath, bows her head.

"I know. It's just...so easy to believe." Cassandra doesn't have an answer to that, not really. Not solidly, at least.

"Do you trust me?" Hera blinks at her, openly off guard.

"Of course."

"I would choose you. A thousand times, I would choose you. You are the best person to lead this Inquisition, the most capable. And I would have it no other way." There's a moment of dumbstruck silence as Hera evaluates her, then allows a slow smile to brighten her face.

"Don't be so flattering, it'll go to my head."

"I'm trying to be sincere," Cassandra grumbles, but it's good natured and softened with half a smile. The moment, of course, cannot last. Even as Cass settles back against Hera's side, the shadows around the Keep lengthen and stretch toward her.

Cassandra inhales as the shadows grow, and on her exhalation the field is plunged into all-consuming inky blackness only possible in the total absence of light. The Seeker cannot tell whether her eyes are open or closed, if Hera is still beside her, if by some miracle this is all a nightmare and she will wake in the next instance to the familiar pre-dawn haze of her room above the armory.

Her hope is quickly dispelled as shades of grey light the space in a monochrome of shadow and deeper shadow, contrasting just enough to reveal the interior of a watch tower in shambles. Hera stands beside her, a contrast in color to their drab surroundings, her palm glowing shockingly bright against the darkness. The demon stands in front of the tower's only window.

"Void take you," Hera hisses, an echo of the burning demonic creature Cass had glimpsed in the distorted hall of Redcliffe Castle. The demon seems amused by this, emitting a low rumble that could be an attempt at laughter.

"I shall take you first."

It is different, this time. The weight dragging on her limbs is no more than the Fade always offers, her movements no slower than she would expect, there is no feeling of power converging on her to alter her behavior. And yet still she cannot land a blow. Hera has no better luck, her own blades passing through empty air as her temper gets farther and farther out of hand. At last she can hold it back no longer, and as Cassandra dodges gnarled claws she yells and thrusts her Fade-torn palm at the creature.

Darkness swells instead of shrinking, and the solid stone walls stretch to accommodate the warped being engorged to overfilling the suddenly too small space. Cass hears a hissed-out stream of expletives, but the green glow of Hera’s hand is gone with the rest of her silhouette, swallowed whole by the demon’s girth. She can’t see it turn, doesn’t register a shift in air or flesh that would signal the creature’s movements, yet suddenly a hood is distinctly in her face. Rancid breath ghosts over her cheeks as it focuses on her. She can see no eyes, can see nothing of a face but cracked lips oozing ichor. Nonetheless, it’s gaze weighs heavy on her.

“Oh ye of so much faith, did you think you deserved this? Have you convinced yourself your Maker would reward you with this victory?” Its hands grasp her sword, press on it. She’s back against a wall, her shield forced away from her body by the demon’s sheer mass. It’s body, pressed between hers and protection, holds defense at bay. She chooses to drag her blade across its hands rather than dignify its words with a response. It chuckles, presses harder against her.

“How could you be the one to bring back the savior? The Divine did not trust you enough to protect her. How could the Most Holy, or the one she served, entrust you with the fate of a nation? With the world?” They didn’t, of course, there was the Inquisitor—

“You left two much better suited to this place behind. A spirit could have traversed this plane with less difficulty than you. The Bull knows your quarry better, could have found her so much faster. How long would it have taken him to dispel the illusions? Minutes? Yet here you are. Alone. Failing. You must leave her behind now, too.” She can’t step back, can’t adjust her stance, or shield to accommodate the creature’s bulk. She is slipping. Arms growing tired. And there will be no help to be found.

“ ** _NO!_** ” A roar bludgeons its way to Cassandra, shaking the very fabric of the reality woven so tightly around her, ringing with a ferocity that could have only one source. Hera arrives in a flash of metal and a swirl of color, green Fade-mist curling spectacularly across blackness.

“Yes,” the creature hisses, backing far enough away from her for the rogue to slip between them, “give me more of your power.” _It’s being siphoned_ , Cass realizes with a jolt. Hera leads a trail of green that wafts into the demon.

“Hera.” She brings her shield back up, lays her sword hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “Hera, stop.” For a moment she thinks it won’t work. Thinks her friend beyond hearing, beyond caring. But sheets of muscle relax slightly under her palm, broad shoulders shifting into a defensive position. Slowly, so slowly, the bigger woman steps back to allow Cassandra beside her. She looks exhausted.

“And now, Seeker?” The words are too weighted by fatigue to sound as teasing as intended.

“Now you take a break.” Hera glares, brings a dagger up in time to block a taloned hand from slicing her open, but turns her body toward Cassandra. She speaks barely loud enough to be heard over the clash of claws on metal, steely and cold.

“What?”

“You’re exhausted, and your rage is fueling it. You must retreat.”

“I’m _sorry_ , I thought I just heard you ask me to leave you _alone_ to face the monster eating the tower around us. The giant monster we _both_ haven’t managed to injure significantly despite _both_ of us trying rather hard to kill it.”

“You heard correctly.”

“Then I refuse.” The Seeker surges forward, enough to shove the monster back by sheer force of will and turns to face her stubborn companion. _Bull-headed doesn’t begin to cover it._

“You are doing more harm than good.” At the upcoming protest, she steps forward and gives her best commanding glare. It’s enough to make Hera pause. “You cannot save me from this, as I could not save you. And you are not helping by feeding it. You know this place, I assume; find somewhere you can help from afar. Having you so near it is a danger to both of us.” There is no time for hesitation, only enough for Cassandra to turn back to the fight. She catches a claw on her shield, another on her sword, and rancid breath in her face before she knows her words are being taken to heart. The demon shrieks as fire explodes on its back, giving her enough room to press forward. The fight is slow, agonizing. It is not a battle she is convinced she will win if it rages much longer. She is no young maiden now, no Hero of Orlais, slayer of dragons. She is merely Cassandra, Right Hand of the dead Divine, fighting endlessly in a shifting realm of shadow against a creature that refuses to stop giving voice to her failures.

An explosion erupts at her feet, frost racing across the toes of her boots as in an instant the black mass in front of her is solidified in ice, its mouth frozen closed.

“You’re almost there, Kadan!” Hera’s shout is close and loud, a point of relief against her growing doubts. She is almost there. She must only continue for a while longer, a short while. She lifts her sword higher and slams the pommel into the demon’s wrist, ice cracking in a satisfying burst. It thaws quicker than any being made of chills should, and she presses it back and back again. She loses footing only twice more, once from sweat in her eyes more than any attack made by the demon. And then, finally, something clicks. The demon roars as it ghosts over an array of spiked metal, it’s invisible feet catching on sharp edges making it shriek. Hera appears almost the instant it steps onto her field of traps, backing it farther in with efficient slashes of poisoned daggers building on the venom of the traps, the rogue’s quick feet avoiding poisoned metal while driving forward harshly. All at once she backs up, raises her hand, pours a thick lightning bolt of Fade energy into the thing. It inflates out over the traps, its swollen bulk suddenly a hindrance where before lay advantage.

“All yours,” Hera pants, sagging as she steps back. Cassandra moves forward with relish, the ground now clear of obstacles. Its head is easy to find; all she has to do is follow the screams. The sweet satisfaction of silencing it with her sword cannot even be soured by the corpse dissolving into shadow before she can twist her blade farther into its flesh. Then the world cracks. The tower splinters, shadows and stones shattering with the unmistakable sound of glass thrown at a wall, of a mirror landing on the ground, of lighting rending the sky—

She reaches for Hera.

Hera reaches back.


	9. To Have and to Hold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did promise a happy ending

She wakes slowly. Her head throbs, ears ringing, and for a moment she feels like she may throw up from vertigo. When her stomach settles enough to comfortably open her eyes, it immediately rolls again at the sight of green.

“Welcome back,” Bull greets with a deep relief that washes over her in comforting waves. And then memory comes crashing back.

“Where is she? Is she alright? Can— is she safe?”

“Easy,” he offers, pressing her back into her bedroll. When had she started to sit up? “Hera woke up a while ago. Cole took her back to Skyhold, but we didn’t want to risk moving you. You and I are going to head back as soon as I think you’re fit to travel.

“I am fit to travel now.” He smirks at her, the big oaf.

“We’ll see about that.” It takes three days for him to decide she’s ready, and though she knows he is correct in his assessment of her physical limitations, it’s three days of teeth-grinding agony for her. They have several day’s ride to Skyhold, on top of the two she had remained asleep while Hera had been conscious. Her pride cannot take much more strain. And it is pride making her anxious to go, she assures herself and Bull, though he hardly seems to believe it. What Right Hand cannot go toe to toe with any other warrior in the realm and be fit to do so again the next day?

Despite her need to return, their arrival at the great stone fortress fills her with nothing but nerves. The Inquisitor has important matters to attend to. And she still has healing to do. So when a messenger greets them at the gate with a summons from the Inquisitor to meet at her earliest convenience, she waves him off and climbs the tower above the Great Hall.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Leliana sing songs over the croaking of her birds when she catches sight of the Seeker’s mussed brown locks. “ _You_ ,” she almost accuses as she ducks around her desk, “were to report immediately to the Inquisitor. Or did you think _at your earliest convenience_ meant whenever you wanted?” Cassandra grunts as the effervescent woman herds her down the stairs like a petulant child.

“I had hoped to know the state of affairs before meeting with the Inquisitor.”

“Would you like assistance, Sister Nightingale?” Dorian laughs through his formal offer. Even the damned _Tevinter_ is laughing at her. Lovely.

“I’ve got it, thank you!” The words barely make it out of Leliana’s mouth before Cassandra’s boots are hitting the first stair down to Solas’s room. She makes several bargains with the Maker concerning everlasting fealty should the mage mysteriously be absent. She will have to fulfill none of them, though at least the has the grace to call no more than a greeting to them both as she is pushed across his room. The embarrassment continues right across the Great Hall and through the door up to the Inquisitor’s quarters, which Leliana slams on Cassandra’s back. The Seeker is more than a little disconcerted to hear a latch clicking closed.

“I’ve got the key,” Leliana’s cheery voice is muffled only minimally by the thick wooden door, “and I’ll not be using it for a while!”

“Blight take you!” But she knows the other woman is already gone.

“Was my messenger unclear? He was to ask your presence, not lead you to believe you should visit Leliana first, Cassandra.” And indeed she is beginning to feel foolish as she climbs the multitude of stairs to the Inquisitor’s quarters, the combination of height and embarrassment serving to color her cheeks by the time she lays eyes on the interior of Hera’s quarters.

“I had—I...was not sure what you remembered. Of our ordeal.” She should not be staring at the floor. She is above this. Her boots are _fascinating._

“All of it.”

“All?”

“Cassandra. I remember _all_ of it. And I believe we have much to discuss.”

She glances up more out of horror than a sudden recollection of her courage, and softens immediately. Hera is standing, moving forward with slow awkwardness that speaks to hidden injury.

“Are you alright?” Her voice is soft, concerned. Hera blows a stream of air out of her nose at the words, but stops her advance in favor of leaning on her desk.

“I feel about as well as you, I’d imagine.”

“Do you need—”

“You’re not avoiding this conversation, Seeker.” She stops, then. Waits silently for the inevitable, for the oncoming rush of awkwardness she had only considered after her arrival. “I would like to apologize;” the other woman begins, “there are parts of myself I had never wished for you to see that have been...rather unfortunately brought to your attention.”

“I would never hold such things against you.” She is confused now. Had Hera thought she would judge so harshly? Was she less willing to trust than she let on?

“I do not...want you to think me incapable of restraining myself.” _But Hera is possibly the most restrained—oh. **Oh**._

“I would not hold matters of the heart against you. If they are indeed matters of the heart…?” She tries desperately to keep the hope out of her voice as she speaks. She has no idea how successful she is, even as she watches a kaleidoscope of emotions play out across the Qunari’s face, eventually settling on a blush.

“You are more than beautiful, Cassandra.” It’s a diplomatic answer that is anything but dodging, the open longing on Hera’s face, the curl of disappointment, of self-deprecating embarrassment at her lips marking the truth of the words clearly. Varric had told her once that the valiant do not fall easily out of love, and it seems to her that Hera stands proof of the statement. Her heart swells in her chest, driving words from her lips.

“Then it is no detriment.” Hera nods once, sharply, and pushes off the edge of the desk. Pushes away, turns to face the windows and Cassandra is left dumbfounded. Had she misunderstood? She moves without thought, closing the widening distance between them, chasing the precious moment of honesty that already is disappearing. She catches Hera’s cheek with her palm, pressing herself up on her toes to reach as she turns ice blue eyes back to meet her own. “It is no detriment,” she phrases her words carefully, picking for meaning with careful deliberation before they leave her mouth, “because it is a boon. One that I would return, if you were so inclined as to give me a second chance.” Hera’s eyes have gone wide as Cassandra spoke, searching her expression as the warrior gives voice to her thoughts.

“We are not still in the Fade?” The question makes Cass smile.

“No.”

“You are sure?”

“Very.”

“Then I would be glad to give you as many chances as you’d like.” Hands wrap around her back, hesitantly drawing the Seeker closer. Too hesitantly. She decides on hurrying Hera along by sliding her hand around the back of her neck, tugging her face down until their lips are inches apart. It quickly becomes clear, however, that the point at which their breath mingles is as far down as Hera is willing to lean. No matter.

“ _Hera,_ ” she breathes, a plea that brings a whine to red lips even as Cass surges upward and closes the gap between them.There’s a tense second of stillness as neither breathes and Cass is the only one moving, and then she is reassured as Hera melts into the touch with a noise of contentment and a fervor that is unlike anything Cassandra had expected. In truth, she had not expected this at all. But when they reluctantly part, both gasping inelegantly for air, she finds a sudden, certain realization that chasing this woman is the best thing she’s done for herself in quite a while.

“You’re sure about this?” Cassandra smiles and answers with a kiss.


End file.
